“Is it safe?”

“Safe?”

“I mean, if they catch us, will they lock us up to make an example?”

“I know what ‘safe’ means, I’m just framing my answer,” Antonia replies. There’s the wail of a siren from her end as a police car hurtles by. “I can’t say anything for sure,” she informs me after it passes. “Nothing is guaranteed. But I’ll tell you that if I were desperate to save a family member, this is the place I would go.”

That does it for me. I agree to run it by Larry and, if he’s good to go, to get started immediately.

“When you can commit a hundred percent to getting out there today, call me back and I’ll confirm with my contact,” Antonia says. “I have an hour and a half before my flight.”

“Where you off to?”

“Conference in London. I’m almost at the airport now. I won’t be able to hear you in a few minutes, but I’ll keep my cell on vibrate.”

“Antonia, you’re an angel…”

“Just call me back within ten minutes so I can let my contact know. Then, when you procure a cab, have the cabbie call the surgeon’s secretary so he can get directions. Here’s the number…”

“Thank you, thank you. When I woke Larry last night to tell him there was a ray of hope, he nearly wept with gratitude,” I say. Am I laying it on too thick? He might have wept-if I’d actually wakened him, and if he were that kind of person. The main thing I want Antonia to know is how much her efforts are appreciated.

“I want to make very clear that I’m not guaranteeing anything, and I’m formally absolving myself of all responsibility for your actions. But good luck. And Daniel?”

“Yes?”

“Be careful…”

Hanging up, I look at Jade. Her seal eyes allow no light to escape. She’s heard everything, understood everything. She’s my instant ally as I dial Larry and get his okay, call Antonia back with our commitment. As we rush to the market exit, Jade asks me something only an ally could.

“This lady you speak with, she is someone we can trust?”

“I think so. I met her at a Jewish synagogue last night.”

“You are Jew?”

I flag a cab. “Yes.”

She stops me and lifts my hat. “But where you horn?”

“Only about half of us have horns these days,” I say, ushering her inside the cab. “It’s part of a PR push. So where shall I drop you?”

Jade waves her hands no as we begin flying through the traffic. “Of course I halp you in this task,” she says.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “Shi is hours away. I don’t even know what time we’ll be back tonight.”

“Don’t ridiculous you,” she says adamantly. “This my country. You are guest. I only worry how you manage in Shi?”

“Don’t know yet,” I say. “We’ll play it by ear.”

“Your ear not get tired from playing it so much?”

I lean to give her a kiss on the cheek. She recoils slightly until she understands it’s just the cheek. Now she’s happy again. I’m happy because I really can use her help. Her face looks American to me right now as we rush to Larry’s hotel. I see my face in the reflection of her sunglasses, and it looks Chinese. Everybody looks like everybody, I conclude sagely. It’s the wisdom that comes when things start clicking into place.

As arranged, Larry and Mary are sitting by the sidewalk in front of their hotel. Larry taps Mary’s elbow to help him up, a gesture I remember his parents making to each other back in Lynn, oddly touching in its familiarity. Larry’s ragged, drained face brightens at the sight of Jade.

“Where’d you find this one?” Larry asks. “They keep getting better and better.”

“She was my breakfast waitress.”

“Must have been some breakfast,” he says dryly.

But now there’s a new development. Mary takes this moment to announce that she’s going home!

“I thought the day after tomorrow,” Larry says in shock.

“Train in two hours,” Mary says.

Larry’s stunned. Why didn’t she tell him before now? But events are in motion, and there’s no time for explanations or elaborate farewells, no time even for Mary to wince when we embrace good-bye and the Little Tree Air Freshener squeezes into her bosom. Larry is shell-shocked as I guide him into the backseat of the cab and slide in after him. Jade takes the front. “Nice a meet you,” Mary calls, blowing us a kiss as we screech off down the block.

“I thought the day after tomorrow” is all Larry can say.

Is the romance over? Is that the end of the Larry-Mary show? Larry is too stunned to respond, and Jade and I can only raise eyebrows.

Here we begin the most harrowing cab ride of our lives to date. Yes, we’re in a rush to meet Dr. X, the mystery surgeon, in the far-off city of Shi before nightfall, but the cabdriver doesn’t need that excuse to dart and weave between diesel trucks with only inches to spare. He likes multitasking-he munches on a hairy chicken claw with one hand while jerking the wheel with the other-so I hand him my cell phone with the surgeon’s secretary predialed for him. “Are! Are! Are!” he says, writing down directions on a Mickey Mouse pad he has taped to the front of his broken speedometer dial.

Traffic leaving the city is frantic, but despite this our driver appears to nod off, while still managing to munch on the chicken claw. Before long he slams the brakes so hard I drill my forehead against the empty kidney-bean can soldered to the back of the front seat that serves as an ashtray. His hands, with yellowish nails that extend a half inch beyond his fingertips, are looped through the steering wheel, and he’s waving his index finger as though conducting an orchestra of fleas.

“Does he know where he’s going?” I ask Jade.

“Oh, yes, very skillful driver,” Jade says.

Coulda fooled me. He ducks under an underpass so low that the antenna scrapes the cement ceiling, then emerges from the other side to shoot across four lanes of traffic without once checking his mirrors. For all this activity, he looks half asleep, slumped over the wheel, with a nasty habit of drooping his head every four or five seconds. It’s exactly how I’d look if I hadn’t slept in two days.

“Can you tell him to slow down?” I ask Jade. This works for the short term, but in a minute he resumes dipping in and out of the breakdown lane, which also contains bicycle riders, shards of truck parts, and workers pushing shopping carts loaded with twenty-foot pipes. After an oncoming bus swerves to avoid hitting us, I notice that Larry doesn’t look well. He hasn’t said a word since Mary left, concentrating instead on studying receipts from his wallet. This is the self-defense clicking in again, how he’s maneuvered a difficult life, but I’m not sure denial is healthy just now.

“I think you miss Mary,” I suggest.

“I do!” he says, releasing air out of his face like punctured bubble wrap. “I’m the first to admit it. I haven’t been without her the whole time I’ve been here. She’s taken care of everything. Maybe it’s a moot point, but I have a lot of sympathy for her. Her life has not been easy, by a long shot. Why can’t we pool our resources and make a go of it together? Or is it too late? I don’t even know if she left for good or if I’ll ever see her again…”

His eyes are closed, and he’s resting his head on the side window while excavating a boil on his chin. You’ve got to be feeling pretty low to keep your eyes closed while you do that.

“Maybe I’m mistaken, but I see great devotion in her. To use a strange word. I mean, she’s not gorgeous, but I pick up a lot of sweetness in her. She sat by my side throughout my entire dialysis yesterday, rubbing my back. If I got taken, I’m going to be hurt beyond belief.”

“What would it mean to be ‘taken,’ exactly?” I ask.

He digs a moment more. “I’m not sure,” he says finally. “I don’t want to sound evasive, it’s just that I’m not sure.” The boil done, Larry starts making sounds as though he’s gargling, but with a dry throat.

A flock of guinea hens scamper across the highway. Some of them make it. The feathers of the rest fill the air like a series of pillow bombs.